Little known key role of Michiel Brandjes in Shell reserves scandal

However, unbeknown to Van de Vijver, Michiel Brandjes (right), who was alarmed by the findings of the report, sent a copy to a New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. This meant that events were no longer in the control of Shell. Instead, Shell’s most sensitive issue since its close association with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis several decades ago, had been disclosed to an outside firm, that had to consider and protect its own reputation.

By John Donovan

In May 2003, Frank Coopman, the then Chief Financial Officer of Shell EP, delivered bad news about Shell’s operations in Nigeria to the Chief Executive of Shell EP, Walter van de Vijver.

Van de Vijver sent Coopman back to Nigeria to investigate further.

The subsequent findings, set out in a status report, were even more devastating, revealing an overstatement of 1.1 billion boe.

Van de Vijver had instructed a team led by Coopman to work on the reserves issues.

The team included a top Shell lawyer, Michiel Brandjes, the then Company Secretary of Royal Dutch Petroleum.

Upon receiving Coopman’s status report in early December, Van de Vijver said that he “considered the report to be incomplete and prematurely conclusive…”

He sent an email dated December 2, 2003, instructing Coopman to destroy the report.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

However, unbeknown to Van de Vijver, Michiel Brandjes, who was alarmed by the findings of the status report, sent a copy to a New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

This meant that events were no longer in the control of Shell.

Instead, Shell’s most sensitive issue since its close association with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis several decades ago, had been disclosed to an outside firm that had to consider and protect its own reputation.

The advice which came back from Carvath’s was unequivocal. Shell must downgrade its reserves and notify the US Securities & Exchange & Commission accordingly.

Brandjes summarized the relevant legal advice within a section of a three-page document “Script for Walter” as follows:

“If and from the time onwards that it is accepted or acknowledged by the management of the issuers (Royal Dutch and SIT) that, when applying the SEC rules, the 2002 proved reserves as reported in the Form 2o-F are materially wrong, the issuers are under a legal obligation to disclose that information to all investors at the same time and without delay_ Not to disclose it would constitute a violation o f US Securities law and the multiple listing requirements….”

The “Script for WaIter” noted that Oman and Nigeria reserves were overstated by 1.3 billion boe and that LKH compliance would require an additional 300 million boe debooking. It also noted that approximately 757 million boe of the reserves disclosed in the 2002 Annual Report on Form 20-F (including Gorgon), which formerly had complied with the Shell Guidelines when booked, now were “possibly at odds with the strictest possible interpretation of the SEC guidelines.”

The “Script” was e-mailed by Coopman to van de Vijver and Boynton on the morning of December 2, 2002 in advance of a CMD meeting (Committee of Managing Directors) scheduled for that day.

Approximately one hour later, van de Vijver e-mailed Coopman directly with the now infamous message:

“This is absolute dynamite, not at all what I expected and needs to be destroyed!

But it was too late, Michiel Brandjes had already acted and the genie could not be put back in the bottle.

Mr. Brandjes is currently the Company Secretary and General Counsel Corporate of Royal Dutch Shell Plc. In that capacity he had an important role in the recent issuance of a profits warning by the company, which once again took the markets by surprise.

SADISTIC SACKING OF WALTER VAN DE VIJVER“The Squeeze” also contains some information about the sadistic sacking of Walter van de Vijver. Apparently when Lord Oxburgh appeared in Walters office, the Dutchman was expecting to be offered the chairmanship, replacing Sir Philip Watts, the then Group Chairman of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. Instead, Oxburgh demanded his resignation. In tears, Walter called his wife Bernadette who quickly arrived at his office and “firmly shut the door.” John Hofmeister forced the door open and dramatically issued a ultimatum.

The hapless Jeroen van der Veer was appointed as successor of Sir Philip “although he had been party to the mismanagement of the group since 2002. He was, it was decided, the least guilty of the group“.

Chris Fay, the former CEO & Chairman of Shell UK Limited who had lost out to Watts in the race for the top job at Shell, is said by Tom Bower to have told Mark Moody-Stuart, a former Shell Group chairman, ‘I warned you that Watts was a cover-up guy, that there was a geological mafia cover-up.‘

Interesting to note that Ben van Beurden, the recently appointed CEO of Royal Dutch Shell Plc was at the time of the reserves scandal, advising Sir Philip Watts and presumably was his close confidant?

Walter van de Vijver (middle) was forced to quit Shell in 2004, together with former chairman Philip Watts (left), and CFO Judy Boynton (right) in a huge scandal that resulted from Shell’s downgrading of its proven oil and gas reserves. Van de Vijver was a Royal Dutch Shell Group Managing Director and head of the Exploration & Production division.

Royal Dutch Shell employed on a part time basis, one non-independent retired former employee, Anton Barendregt, to audit its oil and gas reserves. In stark contrast, Exxon used eight full-time employees – all expert reservoir engineers, supported by a former lawyer for the US Securities & Exchange Commission.

SHELL BLOG

Comments

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: So Shell has been caught with its pants down again, telling blatant lies, this time about the cleanliness of gas. All so that it can improve its clean credentials and make even more $$$. Can we believe anything they tell us? Where would we be without the likes of Friends of the Earth who bring Shell to task. Where does it say we are allowed to lie and mislead in our business principles? This is a great message from the leaders to the worker bees "Do as we say, not as we do". Im sure the paid Shell apologists will come on here and tell us we shouldnt pick on Shell and they are a caring company and we should be greatful for working for them and that John Donovan is to blame.

Bogus Group: A media article has revealed that Shell is already suffering from the legacy of BG Group negligence in maintaining safety critical equipment. The HSE have issued an improvement notice for failing to install gas detection equipment on the Lomond Platform, despite recommendations from two separate studies. A second improvement notice was issued for failing to test a High Integrity Protection System (HIPS) since 2014, despite the associated Performance Standard requirement to test annually. It could be assumed that Finlayson encouraged the infamous Brent TFA during his tenure at the helm of BG to maximise production volumes (an obsession with executives), at the expense of safety system testing. That assumption would not be entirely accurate, the same culture was evident in BG Group long before. Previous failures of a HIPS testing regime had been exposed at another BG operational location, yet despite this no one was held accountable. Maybe if they had been the ‘management team’ in question would not have been implanted in Aberdeen in 2012.
SEE: Shell gets two Lomond warnings from HSE

Who ya kiddin?: This Lower Forever strategy is something that has so obviously been dreamt up by HR and the bean counters so that the company can justify all the savage cost cutting and job culling. I find the company tactics revolting. Anyone with half a brain cell in the oil world knows that its only a matter of time before oil starts to motor upwards.

The second leak, a story in itself, but also what leaked, (HF) hydrogen fluoride is a very dangerous gas when it reacts with the atmosphere, also very harmful to health, look it up. Article does not say what volumes involved but the closure of this super sized plant is a big deal commercially apart from reputation issues.

Doomcaster: As much as I like some of Bill Campbell's articles this latest one is just going a bit too far. there are so many variables which will change the prognosis here that its almost impossible to predict the leakage potential of Prelude. The major ones are location and hydrocarbon profile. I wonder what Bill Campbell would advocate as a solution? It almost appears as if he wants to be in a position to say "I told you so" and not in a supportive mode of "this is what you could do". The safety cases for Prelude do of course look at spill scenarios and remediation is the key, none of us at Shell is naive enough to believe in the 100% carbon loss free situation but common sense, good engineering and good training will do a lot to combat what Bill sees as the inevitable. armchair criticism at its best.

SFA (Say F All): Reading Bill's comments has inspired me to chime in. Ruthless cost cutting is leading to such HSE incidents. The sacking of skilled and experienced staff is taking place all over the place. The risk level is being seen as acceptable where there is heavy cost injection required to be on the safe side. Nobody dares question this due to the HR assassins that are currently patrolling the corridors looking for their next victims.

'avin a larf!: You have to laugh when you read these documents which HR have produced. It must have been written by someone with verbal diarrhea. Expressions like "Focusing capability from both an organisational and locational design perspective to drive productivity, ideation and promote Agile ways of working" show just how far these people are away from the rest of us at the coal face. Some of the invented words (ideation) are superb ! I guess this is all to protect the jobs in HR as someone has to translate this BS into what happens in the real world. It appears we have regressed into the bad old days of buzzword bingo, how many buzzwords can we put into one document. Sigh.

The Fugitive: I am grateful for the information I read in the New York Times as being in the US we are far from whats happening in the American hating HQ. Such job culling decisions are made behind the scenes without just cause or any consultation and then we are told about it when all the decisions are already made. As for this being stolen property, I would love to see Shell try to take John Donovan to the courts again. I'm sure he and his attorney are licking their lips at such a (butt kicking) prospect.

REPLY BY JOHN

Sorry, no prospect of Shell suing me. I have a Shell internal communication stating that they decided long ago that any legal action against me is ruled out. Too much "internal laundry" that they do not want revealed in open court. So I have a free hand to say and publish whatever I want about Shell without fear of retribution. Always sticking to the truth, but perhaps prone to exaggeration as "Cash All Gone" suggests in the nicest possible way.

Cash All Gone: The "leaked" document is not so dramatic as you make it seem - every Shell employee can freely access it, including all the to-be org charts. Everyone should already have had a 1-on-1 conversation with their line manager on whether their job is at risk or not. So Shell is actually very transparently approaching this. On the VP musical chairs - numbers quoted are 50% of VPs would have to leave, and GM level even more. So the cull really cuts right through it...

Shell Job Cuts: How do we know that the Shell document referred to in the Reuters article is not fake? If genuine, and therefore stolen property, why would Shell allow you to publish any of the content?

REPLY BY JOHN DONOVAN

Shell was given the opportunity days ago by myself and more recently by Reuters to take issue with the authenticity of the 88 page document. I supplied extracts and offered BvB sight of the whole document in a security sanitised form. Shell had the option to ask me not to publish (I have accommodated high level requests from Shell previously when grounds were provided) or could have sought an injunction. Shell knew it was authentic and kindly provided comment for Reuters to use in their article.

Good News: PS Cadfael, why do you assume I am a man?

Good News: Cadfael, clearly you're living in the past. It sounds like you are one of those folks who expect you have a job for life. The staff numbers especially in the Head Offices have always been bloated and a legacy of high oil prices. Ben and his management team have taken what most sensible boards would have done. Look, for example, at the costs in Deepwater which have been reduced by over 50% by prudent management and getting rid of the 'good old boy' network. I agree it is not nice for people to lose their jobs, thankfully a lot of the losses have been with the older guys who ran laughing all the way to the bank leaving some of us in good positions. Yes I will look over my back but Shell isn't the only company in the world and people need to realize that protection of jobs comes at a cost. As for Ben looking "an aging, sorry, tired figure", I have never heard so much rubbish. I saw him two days ago and your statement could not be further from the truth. Sad false news I'm afraid.

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